We Have A World To Rebuild
by goldenthyme
Summary: AU: After the death of his best friend and hunting partner, Dean must move on with Cas's neice, Claire, in tow. With her help, he seeks to heal the rift between himself and his brother, while also meeting some old friends along the way.
1. Chapter 1

_Just take the hand that's offered_  
_And hold on tight_  
_This isn't everything you are_

_-"This Isn't Everything You Are" by Snow Patrol_

"No! Let me go! _Let me go!_"

Claire Novak's limbs flailed wildly, hitting Dean and knocking the air out of his lungs.

"Let me go! Why? _Why won't you let me go?_ "

Dean gripped her harder. He swore as he heard a rib crack.

The box had fallen to the ground half a foot from the hole. Graveyard dirt had spilt from it, and the photo had blown away in the wind.

Dean hugged Claire tighter.

"Do you think he'd want this?," Dean yelled. "Do you honestly think that Cas would want you to trade your life for his?"

Claire's knee caught Dean in the crotch. He dropped, but didn't loosen his grip. Claire went limp, her energy spent.

"You're a hypocrite! What if it was _your _family?" Tears ran down Claire's cheeks, her eyes puffed and red.

"You already know the answer to that," Dean sighed. Dean's mother died when he was four. His father had died in a hunting accident only three years ago.

"Maybe I would…if Sam and I had been closer. If we hadn't stopped talking." Dean spoke smoothly, but softly. "But I'm not a role model, Claire. I'm not someone you want to be."

Claire wrapped her arms around Dean and pressed her face into his chest. Dean stroked her back while she sobbed.

"I-I miss him, Dean. I really, really miss him," she hiccupped. Dean gathered her into a hug.

"Me too, Claire. Me too."'

* * *

Hey guys! I'll be updating this one pretty quickly, and hope to finish it within the month. Then I'll get cracking on that other, much much much much more depressing one. I have issues.

Returning to my starter chapter theme song/lyrics format. I fully recommend listening to the song while reading. This first one is the overall story theme, while others will be just chapter themes. If you don't like to listen to songs while reading, well, you don't have to~


	2. Chapter 2

_I'm miles from where you are,  
I lay down on the cold ground  
I, I pray that something picks me up  
And sets me down in your warm arms_

_- "Set Fire To The Third Bar" by Snow Patrol_

Condensation clouded the Impala's windows. Dean sighed and clicked the windshield wipers again. His ribs ached. Definitely broken. He planned to wrap them the best he could when they reached their hotel. But now he wanted to put as much distance between them and that place as possible. Claire's head rested against her window in the passenger seat. She had drifted into the deep sleep that followed a hard cry. Her body was all bunched up, curled against the door. Dean wondered absently how she could be comfortable in such a position.

The stars were bright. Not a cloud in sight. They twinkled as the highway rushed by. A haunting large moon, full, hung high in the sky.

The car was silent. Dean didn't play any music. He didn't plan to, right now. Sometimes music couldn't help. Rare, it was, but it happened.

"_I do not understand your fascination with Led Zeppelin." Castiel sat stiffly at the motel's cheap desk, flipping through papers littered with Latin text._

"_He's classic, man! It's all in the beat.."_

_The argument was an old one, between old friends. It could go on for hours, but both men could easily smile at the end. Often, Castiel started it purposely, a small twitch in his face being the only clue._

Dean swallowed and gripped the steering wheel tighter in his hand, trying his best to focus on the road.

The clock read 3:21 when Dean parked in the lot of a gas station. He filled up, then made sure to lock the doors of the Impala before walking inside. Claire didn't twitch.

Dean stood in front of the drink section, contemplating getting a bear. Well, fantasizing. He wasn't going to drink, not while driving and certainly not with a kid in the car. Instead he bought a medium sized coffee. The cashier looked half asleep, and she took his card, ringing him up without giving it a second glance. Good thing, too. Dean only had a few more days on that card, tops, before he was damned sure it would be tracked by the feds.

Dean took a sip while climbing back into his baby and made a face. Horrible coffee. Oh well, at least it would keep him up. Dean planned to drive for at least another hour and a half before finding a cheap place for the two of them to sleep. He glanced back up at the sky as he started the car. Stars twinkled back at him.


	3. Chapter 3

_When the moment dies_  
_and I come to you_  
_with a broken lie_  
_that I made for you._

_"Mirador" by Efterklang _

The guy at the motel's check-in desk gave Dean a silent once over. Dean scowled. He didn't like being scrutinized, especially at the sleazy places he stayed. And here was this guy, scruffier than most with his scraggly beard and stained beer-brand shirt, giving Dean the hairy eyeball.

"Something wrong?"

The man snorted and scratched his cheek. He leaned in toward Dean over the counter.

"Double or single?" He growled, glancing over to Claire, who leaned against the wall near the entrance. Her eyes were less red, but she looked just as miserable. Dean clenched his teeth. He was _not_ dealing with this shit today.

"Two singles," Dean ground out, matching his voice to Mr. Biker-Wannabe. It was summer. Normally, he got less shit during this season. Random people tended not to approach them and ask why Claire wasn't in school – like her education was everyone's friggin' business – or why they were always moving around. He never received so many questions when it was just Cas and him. There's something, when kids are involved, that perked people's interests. Riled them up.

Scruffy's eyes flickered between the pair, again. A part of him deflated, as he shook his head slightly and handed Dean the keys.

"He was suspicious," Claire said later, as they walked to their rooms. Dean nodded.

"He didn't do anything."

Dean sighed.

"They don't tend to. It's why monsters can get away with so many things. Humans don't seek out unhappy thoughts. In the end, they want to think the best of everyone."

"Deep," Claire noted. Then she got a funny look on her face.

"We," she said.

"Huh?" Dean stopped in front of their door.

"We. We want to think the best of everyone." Claire's eyes were wide, in that soul searching way that Cas would send in Dean's direction, a look that made her look much older than her fourteen years.

Dean looked away.

"Yeah, I meant 'we.'"

* * *

Claire flopped onto the mattress. It squeaked softly. The room was even uglier than most of the motels she'd visited the last three years. The walls were what looked to be a puke yellow, and – if the stark splotches were anything to go by – it might actually have puke stains. The floor was also dizzying, a maroon carpet inlaid with a swirling turquoise design.

Dean was organizing a stack of papers he'd printed at a library, probably while Claire had slept in the car. His eyes flicked over each article. Working. Claire sighed and threw an arm over her eyes. Even now, he was totally engrossed in work. The sniff of a hunt, the research, the kill.

_"It's what Dean does. He throws himself into things. He likes to believe he is stronger than his emotions. The idea that he can still work while upset gives him that illusion."_

_ Castiel's eyes never left Dean as he spoke._

"_What happened?" Claire leaned into her uncle. _

_She thought, for a while, that her uncle wouldn't answer. He stayed silent as they watched Dean poking and prodding under the hood of his car._

"_Today is his brother's birthday," Castiel said abruptly._

_Oh. Claire picked at her sleave._

"_He is all Dean has. But they are…estranged.'_

"_How does he stand it?" Claire asked._

_Castiel turned to her, his head tilted in a questioning tone._

"_Being alone," Claire clarifies._

_ Castiel gives his niece a sad smile._

* * *

Sunlight streamed through the curtains. Claire groaned and buried her head under a pillow. Without warning, she felt both it, her blanket, and the sheets, pulled away.

"Up and at 'em, kiddo.'

Claire sat up, grabbed the remaining pillow, and threw it at Dean's head.

"Hey!" Dean chuckled as he ducked. "Don't take out your grumpy on me!"

**Claire used Growl! It was not effective…**

Claire laid back down. Dean hummed as he folded his clothes into his bag. If Claire had been more awake, she'd have noted the humor in a semi-chauvinistic, "no-chick-flick-moments" hunter folded and organizing.

Then again, someone had to do it. Claire had never been the neatest person in the world, and her uncle…

Well, Cas had had a difficulty with most modern appliances.

"We have a hunt?" Claire asked, looking up at the ceiling.

Dean nodded. "We've got a hunt."


	4. Chapter 4

_I cried to my daddy on the telephone_

_How long now?_

_Until the clouds unroll and you come down_

_The line wentBut the shadows still remain since your descent_

_Your descent_

_ -"The Saints are Coming" by U2_

Claire grunted as her arms strained. This grave was deep. And damp. Mud was all over her clothes, smudged on her face, hands, arms, legs, and who knows what else. Dean dug next to her, every bit as dirty.

The grave belonged to Isaac Horiuchi – date of birth June 8, 1918, and date of death the same day in 1946. He survived as a soldier in World War II only to be jumped and killed by idiotic bigots that apparently thought that war had never ended – and who obviously thought all Japanese Americans were spies. "Some shit like that," Dean had muttered while briefing Claire.

Dean never took Claire hunting if he had a choice. It was a blended result of his overprotectiveness of the young as well as his strong friendship with Claire's uncle.

"Jeez, wished all my life for a dad. Now I have two who freak out if I so much as stub my toe," Claire had joked at one point. She hit and scraped during a hunt – the second in which she'd ever participated and the last, until now. Her statement had elicited an eye roll from Dean and a soft remark from Castiel "not to insult her father," as he patched her up. She was regulated to research, workouts, practice shooting, and sparing, afterward. No hunting. Of course, she'd ranted about the whole thing to Dean, – why work so hard if she would never hunt? - but he had shrugged.

"Just because you're not hunting now doesn't mean you won't ever," he had pointed out.

So Claire had watched and learned. And on the nights of hunts she would stay awake, always worrying that one of the two men – or, to be worse, both – would fail to return.

As for why, when only months ago Dean had definitely sided with Castiel over the "hunting or no hunting" issue, Dean had taken Claire with him… it wasn't as if Dean was unable to hunt alone. The problem was that he was too much of the spirit's type – late twenties to early thirties, white, male, looks and acts like an asshole – and very much a potential target. Claire herself still could be harmed, though. After all, vengeful spirits weren't particularly fond of being cast into whatever abyss they were cast into when they were salted and burned.

Claire sagged against the handle of her shovel.

"How much longer do you think we have to dig?" she panted.

"Not much – " Dean grunted as they heard splintering sound. "Quick, help me clear off the rest of the dirt." He threw his shovel over the top of the hole and grabbed a large container of salt, lighter fluid, and a crowbar.

Claire was finishing dusting off the top of the coffin when a cloud passed in front of the moon. She shivered. Cold…was she cold? No. She was just freaking out. Just freaking out.

The coffin opened with an echoing crack. Dean let out a sigh of relief and dumped salt and lighter fluid onto the body. He opened his lighter with a click and gave Claire a grin.

"Let's fry this sucker."

The cold came again.

An invisible hand hit Dean in the chest. He collided with the dirt wall and dropped the lighter before being launched out of the hole.

"Dean!" Claire screamed. There was no answer. Adrenaline pumped through Claire's veins. She dove for the lighter.

Something grabbed Claire's neck and she fell to the ground. She kicked and twisted, but it only tightened.

_Iron. I need iron. Iron or salt._

She groped around, her hand connecting with the handle of her shovel. She swung. Hard.

The pressure receded, and Claire sat up, gasping. As quickly as she possible, she retrieved the lighter and set fire to Horiuchi's bones.

"God, Dean. Please be okay," she whispered.

Claire found her guardian standing next to– scratch that, _hanging from _– a corner of the graveyard's fence. A spike stuck out his shoulder. Her mouth dropped open.

"Is that -?" Dean just gave her a strained grin.

"Ouch."

"Ouch?" Claire gave Dean a glare. "A ghost impales you in the shoulder and all you have to say is ouch?"

"I would shrug at that…but that's might be a really bad idea right now. A little help?" Dean brought his left hand up to his shoulder and pushed slightly. He hissed in pain.

"Um, don't do that. Don't do that," Claire fretted. "I'll just…okay." She put one hand in front, and the other behind, his shoulder.

"On three. One…"

"Son of a bitch!"

* * *

I apologize for any errors! I wrote this rather quickly and didn't go back to look for any errors. I hope the next update comes soon (the one for my other SPN story will) but I...procrastinate.


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